Public invited to July 9 panel discussions on natural disasters

Separate panels will discuss devastating natural disasters across the Indian Ocean and in Japan on Saturday, July 9, from 9 a.m. to noon in Crawford Hall Room 105 at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. The day of public discussion and public policy deliberation—which is open to the public and titled, “From Banda Aceh to Fukushima: Rethinking Risk, Resilience and Recovery”—culminates a week-long summer-time Urban and Regional Planning graduate course, “Special Topics in Disaster Management.”

The first panel, “Looking Back at the Indian Ocean Tsunami,” will be held from 9:00-10:15 a.m., and focus on lessons learned from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Panelists are Kitty Courtney, Tetra Tech; Laura Kong, UNESCO NOAA, International Tsunami Information Center; Tom Peterman, Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies; Bruce Barnes, UH Mānoa Matsunaga Institute for Peace; and I Made Brunner, UH Mānoa Research Associate.

The second panel, “In the Wake of Fukushima: What’s Next in Terms of Recovery and Resilience,” will take place from 10:30 a.m. to noon, and will examine the questions of risk, resilience and recovery with regard to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan. Panelists are Rhett Butler, UH Mānoa Adjunct Geophysicist; Van Romero, New Mexico Tech University; Claudio Filippone, Logos Tech; and Bruce Houghton, Science Director at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center (NDPTC).

The discussions are hosted by the UH Disaster Management Summer Institute, with support and participation from NDPTC, the UH PACOM Partnership, and the Pacific Risk Management ‘Ohana (PRiMO).